680915 - Letter to Sivananda written from San Francisco

Letters by Date, 1968

His Divine Grace
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

September 15, 1968

My Dear Sivananda,

Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated Sept. 10, 1968, just after posting my reply to your letter dated Sept. 9. The coincidence that as soon as you received my letter for opening the Berlin center immediately, Krishna has sent you immediately a check for 200 American dollars—this is a good omen that we should immediately open our branch in Berlin. The description of the storefront with 4 rooms and floor, kitchen, and bathroom etc, appears to be very suitable for our purposes. And the rent is not much and I am so glad that you can manage it. So my advice is that you can immediately occupy the storefront for our branch, and let me know the address so that we can enlist our Berlin center immediately in the list of our several other centers.

Please do not be very serious with Swami Omkarananda because they are impersonalists. You can keep good friendship with different yoga teachers, but practically our mode of Krishna Consciousness is different from theirs. Perhaps these people may not like our Sankirtana movement, so you have to be very careful in their association.

The package said to be sent by you is not yet received here. Anyway, I offer all blessings of Krishna onto you and be successful in your noble adventure. I shall be glad to hear from you further, and hoping you are well.

Your ever well-wisher,

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

N.B. The third mantra of your Gayatri ceremony was stated wrong. It should read as follows: "AIM GURUDEVAYA VIDMAHE KRISHNANANDAYA DHIMAHI TANNAH GURO PRACHODAYAT." In other words, "TANNAH GURO" should be inserted, and "DHIYO YO NAH" should be removed. Please correct as need be.